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 "The Object of My Defection Is To Turn My Chances of Re-Election From Pink to Rosy Red..." |
Switching parties is just
a time-honored tradition
of TheColumnists.com
"Anyone can rat, but it takes a
certain ingenuity to re-rat."
--Winston Churchill, 1925
Arlen Specter, the quirky and sometimes irascible senator from Pennsylvania, has quit the Republican Party and become a Democrat.
“I am unwilling to have my 29-year
Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate,”
Specter sniffed in a prepared statement.
There was a plain implication that the Republicans in Pennsylvania
have become so right-wing that anyone with statesmanlike qualities--someone
such as himself, for instance--would be too advanced for those
voters to appreciate.
Specter was elected to the U. S. Senate in 1980 He is the 12th-most senior member of the Senate and at 79, the fifth oldest.
It was plain that Sen. Specter pulled the switch to ensure his political survival. According to polls by Quinnipiac University, Specter has a 62 percent approval rating among Democrats and a mere 55 percent approval rating among Republicans.
Barring the unexpected, the switch will therefore almost certainly help Specter’s chances of winning a sixth term. The Democrats eying the Pennsylvania primary are distinctly low-caliber. On the Republican side, Specter faced formidable opposition from former Rep. Pat Toomey, a hard-right conservative who almost defeated him in the 2004 primary. Few gave Specter a chance of defeating Toomey in the 2010 primary. In a March 2009 poll, Specter trailed Toomey among Republicans by 14 percent, with Toomey winning approval from 41 percent and Specter trailing badly at 27 percent.
What most people outside the world of political junkies don’t know is that Specter has been a Democrat before. He switched his registration to Republican in 1965 to run for Philadelphia district attorney. He thought he would have a better shot as a Republican. He was right.
No matter how much purple-faced, jowl-shaking
indignation you may hear about it from right-wing blogs and radio,
Specter’s defection is part of a time-honored political
tradition. Winston Churchill, in fact, double-defected. He started
out as a Conservative, defected to the Liberals, and then switched
back to the Conservatives. (See quotation above.) Ronald Reagan
was a liberal Democrat and supporter of Franklin Roosevelt, but
switched to the Republicans and supported Barry Goldwater for
president in 1964.
“I didn’t leave the party. The party left me,”
Reagan said.
Like Reagan, Specter can argue that he defected out of principle.
He was, for instance, one of only three Republican Senate votes
for President Obama’s economic stimulus bill. Specter believes
in certain things, the majority of increasingly conservative
Republican voters in Pennsylvania believe in certain other things,
and either Specter had to change his beliefs, or the Republican
voters had to change theirs.
With Al Franken’s expected eventual seating as a Democratic
senator from Minnesota, the Democrats will have a 60-vote majority
in the Senate, meaning Republicans can’t filibuster to stop
the Obama Express.
Some measure of the Republicans’ desperation is the fact
that they are starting to talk about good government.
Republican Sen. John Thune fretted that Americans wanted checks
and balances. His fellow Republican, Sen. Judd Gregg told reporters
“there's no checks and balances on this massive expansion
on the size of government."
Senator Mitch McConnell, the leader of the shrinking Republican
minority in the Senate, went further. He said there was a "threat
to the country." He asked rhetorically if Americans would
want the majority to rule--wait for it--"without a check
or a balance."
Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, who can always be depended upon to lower the tone of any political commentary, said Specter had “flipped the bird” at the Republican Party.
As he resumes life as a Democrat, and prepares for the rigors of the 2010 campaign, Specter may take some comfort from another quote from Sir Winston, who once said:
“It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required.”
©2009 by Charles M. McFadden. The McFadden caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The illustration is a staff artist's vision of a photo from Newsday. This column first posted on May 11, 2009.
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